18. Now that interpreter whose determination hath the honour to be held for _the word of God_, is not every one that translates the Scriptures out of the Hebrew and Greek tongue, to his Latin auditors in Latin, to his French in French, and to other nations in their mother tongue; for this is not to interpret. For such is the nature of speech in general, that although it deserve the chief place among those signs whereby we declare our conceptions to others, yet cannot it perform that office alone without the help of many circumstances. For the living voice hath its interpreters present, to wit, time, place, countenance, gesture, the counsel of the speaker, and himself unfolding his own meaning in other words as oft as need is. To recall these aids of interpretation, so much desired in the writings of old time, is neither the part of an ordinary wit, nor yet of the quaintest, without great learning and very much skill in antiquity. It sufficeth not therefore for interpretation of Scriptures, that a man understand the language wherein they speak. Neither is every one an authentic interpreter of Scriptures, who writes comments upon them. For men may err; they may also either bend them to serve their own ambition; or even resisting, draw them into bondage by their forestallings; whence it will follow, that an erroneous sentence must be held for _the word of God_. But although this might not happen, yet as soon as these commentators are departed, their commentaries will need explications; and in process of time, those explications expositions; those expositions new commentaries, without any end. So as there cannot, in any written interpretation whatsoever, be a canon or rule of Christian doctrine, whereby the controversies of religion may be determined. It remains, that there must be some canonical interpreter, whose legitimate office it is to end controversies begun, by explaining the word of God in the judgments themselves; and whose authority therefore must be no less obeyed, than theirs who first recommended the Scripture itself to us for a canon of faith; and that one and the same person be _an interpreter of Scripture_, and a _supreme judge of all manner of doctrines_. [Sidenote: Divers significations of a Church.]